Daily Times

More than a century ago, an English Lord Chancellor found himself under attack over some judicial appointments.

He silenced his critics with simple logic by asserting that he had only three criteria for the appointments: “A judge should be a gentleman, a gentleman and a gentleman, and if he knows a little law, so much the better.” One wishes we had followed this criterion in Pakistan not just for the judiciary but for all offices – high or low – while adding ladies to the list as well. What we see in actual practice are people lacking in civility occupying most offices. There are small people in high places with some exceptions. And when I say small, I am not referring to their physical height but to their stature as men and women.

From what we read of our history, being gentle, civil or kind has never remained our strong points. Let us start at the beginning, the Prime Minister and Secretary General Cabinet came unannounced to see the Founder Governor General in the Ziarat residency.

If Pakistan has to remain a respectable partner in the comity of nations, we need to inject some civility, politeness and courtesy into everything that we do.

The latter told his sister, “They have come to see whether I will live or die.” After the meeting, the Prime Minister was cracking jokes at dinner while sitting with the sister of a person who was dying. Two weeks later, the Governor General was sent an ambulance without fuel to pick him up from the airport. Later the same night he passed away, with people conjecturing whether he died of tuberculosis, lung cancer or both. It was ingratitude which actually killed him!

Three years later in 1951, the Prime Minister was shot dead in broad daylight. Two years more down the line, martial law was declared in Lahore as most of Punjab was on fire with people demanding the removal of the Foreign Minister.

Why – was he responsible for any diplomatic faux pas? No, he just belonged to the wrong sect. Taking advantage of the confusion, the Prime Minister was shown the door by the Governor General in 1953. The next year, the latter dissolved the Constituent Assembly and the President of that Assembly had to don a burqa to escape arrest and file a petition in the relevant court. Four years later in 1958, all the politicians were either sent home or incarcerated.

By 1978 an elected Prime Minister who had been deposed and confined wrote in his dying declaration that the people who kept the Founder dying in an ambulance and shot the first Prime Minister were now after his blood. Some months later, he was silenced by the hangman’s noose, in what has now been supremely acknowledged as a miscarriage of justice.

History, however, came full circle when his own daughter who had twice remained Prime Minister was killed in the same place in 2007 where the first prime minister was shot in 1951, only more sophisticated methods were used, making it appear as if she was responsible for her own death with no assassins.

Coming to the present times, any person with an iota of decency had stopped using X or Twitter because of the filthy abusive language being used there since years. Now although that social media handle is officially banned, it is used by thousands of important persons or trolls using a VPN with the trends and discussion growing more indecent than before.

Then we see petty police officials shove or literally throw former Federal Ministers or provincial Chief Ministers into their vans for unclear legal reasons. And finally we see a Chief Minister ordering the closure of the Governor’s suite at the province’s house in Islamabad. We seem to have touched an all-time low in morality and decency. The same is true in official relations. With all federal and provincial budgets due next month in June, there is generally little clarity even on the size or outlay of any budget. And let me stop here!

It is clear from the foregoing that our main problem is not an unprecedented economic crisis, burgeoning inflation, enhanced taxation, growing unemployment, rapid population growth, food insecurity, malnourishment, stunting, hepatitis B&C, tuberculosis, cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes or cancers. All our problems stem from the lack of a civilized discourse necessary for solving these issues.

Our disgraceful treatment of one another is leading us nowhere. If Pakistan has to remain as a respectable partner in the comity of nations, we need to change course immediately and inject some civility, politeness and courtesy in everything that we do. This obnoxious and disgraceful behavior has to stop; be it at an official or private level. We need to shed off our old habits and at least try to be graceful.

Unless we do so, we will only lower the prestige of the nation, and teach our younger generations all the wrong lessons. They may consider this indecency as the norm and face grave consequences when they grow up and come in the real world beyond their cell phones. I implore and beseech everyone – let us please be civilized!

The writer is a senior global health and public policy specialist.